Digital Film Tools Releases Power Stroke 1.0 and Power Matte 1.0 for Adobe After Effects
Digital Film Tools announces the release of Power Stroke version 1.0, a stroke based color correction, colorization and special effects plug-in and Power Matte 1.0, an easy to use interactive image matting tool.
Designed with the creative work flow of colorists, film/video editors, graphic designers and artists in mind, Power Stroke introduces a simple, interactive stroke-based work flow to quickly and intuitively perform targeted adjustments. Instead of meticulously drawing exact masks, using inaccurate matte extractions or hand painting frame to frame, regions of interest are isolated by drawing a few simple and loose After Effects open or closed masks. Power Stroke then uses the concepts of luminance-weighted chrominance blending and fast intrinsic distance computations to determine the edges of your target area and adjustments are made only in those areas. Masks can be assigned multiple corrections and effects such as color correction, recoloring or desaturation, colorization of black and white images, blur, fill light for dimly lit image areas and diffusion/glow. Using patented algorithms, Power Stroke produces high-quality results at a fraction of the complexity and computational cost of previous techniques. At long last, gestural selection, colorization and image adjustment have been combined into one natural, fast and easy process.
Power Matte is an easy to use interactive image matting tool capable of extracting almost any object in an image–even if you are dealing with fine hair detail, smoke, or reflections. This extraction process creates what is known as a matte–essentially a black and white cutout. White matte areas are extracted, black areas not, and gray areas in between represent a level of transparency. Once a matte is extracted, the foreground object can be seamlessly composed onto a new background as well as apply filter and image corrections only within the area defined by the matte. All this is made possible without the aid of blue or green screen photography. To work this magic, Power Matte iteratively estimates the transparency value for every pixel in the image, based on a small sample of foreground (what you want to cut out) and background (what you want to get rid of) pixels marked by defining simple open or closed masks. Results show that compared with previous approaches, our method is more efficient and requires minimal effort to extract high quality mattes for foregrounds with significant semi-transparent regions. In addition, the foreground edge colors can be estimated in the semi-transparent areas to create a seamless composite.
Power Stroke is based on research and technology by Liron Yatziv and Guillermo Sapiro from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota and Power Matte is based on unpublished research and technology by Jue Wang from the University of Washington. Both products are exclusively licensed by Digital Film Tools. Digital Film Tools is an offshoot of a Los Angeles based, full-service visual effects facility specializing in feature film and television special effects. Power Stroke and Power Matte for Adobe After Effects are available for download or purchase at: www.digitalfilmtools.com for $195 each.
